


Stealth and Strawberries

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, F/M, Funny, M/M, Saucy, Spies & Secret Agents
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-01-21
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:32:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3207635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This is fluff. Fun. Adventure. Friendships of various sorts. It just came to me, and I had to do it. I just did. I hope it's just exciting enough to keep you awake, and funny enough to raise a smile. It's a very soft "mature" rating. Not explicit in the least. Naughty more than porny.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stealth and Strawberries

Sherlock stood in the inky nighttime shadows of the tall pines that grew at the boundary of the back acres of Holmescroft, his elegant little field binoculars held up too his eyes. He was dressed as John had seldom seen him, though Mary had taken one look and started laughing.

“Ooh,” she’d gasped. “You are taking this seriously.”

He’d shot her a bitter glance. “You could offer to help.”

She’d raised her hands, palms out, shaking her head. “Don’t look at me, Sherlock. Someone’s got to stay home and watch the sprog. Take John out for a run. He’s been going all junk-yard dog on me lately.”

“Perhaps that’s due to your own reluctance to share our adventures?” He’d arched his browss.

She’d laughed again. “Don’t go sarky on me, Sherlock. I promise, I give him plenty of wild action on the home front. He’s just itching for an excuse to take the Sig Sauer out for a jaunt.”

“In which case he’s going to be disappointed,” Sherlock said. “I can afford a number of accidents during this venture, but accidentally shooting any of my brother’s staff would almost certainly end the game.”

She looked at him and at John, then said, more warily than previously, “You’re sure, Sherlock? You’re going to break into Mycroft’s own place, guarded by his best security people—and you’re going unarmed?”

He smirked. “Not precisely.” He reached behind him, grabbing a sturdy carry-on duffle by its shoulder strap. He dumped the weighty sack on the kitchen table, where it lay, black and imposing on the white enamel. “Are you going to look?” he asked, when she delayed, pressing her hands to her mouth.

“Sherlock,” she gritted out. “What have you done?”

“Look!” Eyes glittering he leaned over and slowly, seductively tugged the zipper. There was a dark, oily gleam of metal inside.

“Sherlock….” Her eyes were worried. “You and John—you don’t know what you’re getting into.”

He grinned. “Then you check them for us.”

“It’s not checking that’s the problem. Neither of you are really trained for this. I’d trust your brother’s people more. Or, hell—I’d trust Mycroft. Lestrade, even. Sherlock, they’re trained _not to shoot._ ” She peeked into the bag and twitched. “The thought of you and John running around with those—it scares the hell out of me. Someone’s going to get hurt, because that’s what John’s been trained to do with those.”

“Unlike you?” John drawled.

“Mine generally survive surgery, if I intend them to,” she snapped. “Even a close call like Sherlock made it…and he was running heroin in his veins.”

The three were silent for a moment. At last John sighed and gave way. “All right. Granted it wasn’t a killing shot, even if it could have been more accurate…”

“I moved,” Sherlock said.

“See? He moved!”

“Granted,” he said again, tersely, “It wasn’t a killing shot. Now, tell me, how is that an advantage up against people like Mycroft’s folks?”

“You know they won’t kill you unless you make them,” she said, exasperated.

“Which means at least Sherlock and I have a betting chance.”

“No, you idiot, you don’t. You’ll try to use that to your advantage.”

“Right.”

“Which will make them change tactics, and kill you.” She sighed. “If they know you’re ready to kill them, they don’t have any choice. And you are too stubborn not to try to kill them because they can kill you otherwise.”

“Which is why—“

Sherlock cut his friend off, saying, “Which is why I’m taking the choice out of John’s hands.” He dipped into the duffel and pulled out a browned-steel automatic that shone under the kitchen lights, and tossed it toward Mary, who swore even as she snatched it out of the air—and froze, face blank with shock.

“What?” John asked, bewildered.

She gave a delayed, but genuine squeak, staring, then lit up in crazy glee, and tossed it to her husband, who grabbed it in turn, swearing….

And stopped.

“Fuck.”

Mary looked at Sherlock. “Water pistols?”

“Water jets, really,” he said, modestly. “Mostly reservoir, with an air pump and a high-pressure delivery nozzle.”

“Water pistols?” John squalled, a beat behind, glowering at the device in his hand. “Sherlock, I am not going up against Mycroft’s people with nothing but a water pistol to protect myself.” He gathered himself, and attempting dignity, said, “I have a wife and a child to consider. And Mary won’t let me.”

Mary started chuckling. “Yes I will,” she said, suddenly chipper. “Go right ahead.”

“Mary!” John scowled at her in shock and hurt. “You’d send me in with no weapon?”

“Better than no weapon—a weapon you don’t trust and your enemies will quickly realize is harmless,” she said, firmly. “Shoot at them even once and they’ll know they’re safe….and they won’t kill you.”

“And until I shoot at them? Mary, these look real!”

“And Mycroft’s people won’t shoot to kill until they feel threatened.”

“And if they shoot to not-kill, but they’re not as clever as you?” he said, all sarcasm.

“Then you’ll have to follow my directions carefully, so we can avoid confronting anyone but Mycroft in the first place,” Sherlock said, lazy and amused. “Come on, John—think of the fun. Think of the gamble! You, me. Holmescroft, crawling with Mycroft’s security staff. Somewhere, Mycroft in residence absolutely certain to take the fun out of everything….and in his files, Anthea assures me, he holds the record of Mary’s previous career.”

“So?” John growled. “It’s not like he’s shown any sign he wants to use them.”

Mary grimaced.

“He hasn’t!” John insisted.

“Nooooo,” she said, then, softly, “And I don’t think he will. But…”

“But your wife is a sensible woman and she’d rather have as few copies of that material floating around as possible. So we break in, find the correct safe, scoop up the papers, and run,” Sherlock said.

Which was how he and John came to be lurking outside Holmescroft, waiting, with Sherlock in black ninja togs—black turtleneck, black twill trousers, black trainers, black makeup smeared under his eyes. John wore a dark navy pea coat and dark trousers and a dark watch cap.

“Now,” Sherlock rumbled, softly, folding and tucking the binoculars. “Go!”

They raced across the smooth lawns, coming to hide under the supporting wall of the raised terrace.

“We go in the French doors?” John confirmed.

“Yes. Let me go first. I know the code.”

“You’re sure he hasn’t changed it?”

“Not mine, he hasn’t,” Sherlock said.

John smiled to himself. The brothers drove him mad—but also amused him. Trust Mycroft to stubbornly refuse to lock his baby brother out of the family estate without at least warning him first. “If you say so,” he said, smiling.

Sherlock merely grunted, every sense riveted to the house a half-dozen yards away.

John saw a faint light shift in the library, behind the sheer gauze curtains that shimmered over the French doors.

Sherlock started counting under his breath.

“Ten. Fifteen. Twenty. Now!”

The scampered across the smooth flagstone terrace. Sherlock leaned against the wall at the edge of the wide door frame, fingers flashing over the keypad hidden behind the yew shrubbery flanking the door. “Now!”

John turned the handle, shot inside, and lunged for the opposite side of the doorway, finding the pad and hitting the set of numbers Sherlock had forced him to memorize even as Sherlock himself came in, a black-clad phantom. The younger man carefully shut the door behind him, nodded to John, and gestured toward the bookshelves on the side wall.

“What?”

“Shhhhhh.” Sherlock touched something, and the shelves swung wide, revealing a dark room beyond. “In.”

John slipped in, and waited as Sherlock followed.

They were in a tiny octagonal room that somehow had been fitted into the floorplan of the house in such a way that John had never noted it in prior visits. “What the…”

“Priest’s hole,” Sherlock said.

“Didn’t know your people were Catholics.”

“They weren’t, very. But they did quite like lace and velvet and brandy and High Church services, and Great-great whatever detested Oliver Cromwell,” Sherlock said.  “And it was a convenient place to hide his mistress when she came to visit.”

John managed to choke back any comment whatsoever about Holmes relatives long since dead and buried. Instead he said, simply, “This leads to other passages, then?”

“Such as there are, yes. I’m afraid for the most part it’s servant’s corridors. Short cuts to the pantry and the like. But there are a few real secret doors, and Mycroft doesn’t tell most of his people about them. They’re our own secret.”

And now John’s. The shorter man smiled to himself, wondering what Mycroft would say of his brother giving away a family secret that way. The man probably wouldn’t smile for a week, he thought. He wondered if he’d even shown that pretty PA of his who still seemed to be his wing woman.

They cat-footed through the little room, past the delicate fantasy of a curtained four-poster bed, past a little glazed tile stove ornamented with lavish indigo on white patterns. They eased out a door on the other side, and crept along a shabby corridor with the lathe-work showing and nothing more than coconut-fiber matting on the bare, unfinished floorboards. Then a turn, and they were in one of the finished passages of the main house, darting from what had appeared to be a linen cupboard or utility closet and heading for a dark wood door that took them into a billiard room.

“Shhhh, shhh, hide!” Sherlock sounded rattled. “Someone’s out who shouldn’t be.” He lunged for a big leather-covered wing chair near the fireplace and ducked behind. John, cursing, dove toward the billiard table and ducked underneath.

The monster was supported by eight massive, cross-braced columnar legs that pretended to be turned. John’s fingers, though, could feel the wedges of wood making them up—they were structured like little barrels around a hollow core.  Or, no, he thought. Probably not actually hollow. Probably steel supports with built-in levels that would allow the owners to make sure the hundreds of pounds of level slate table were in perfect true and held secure from anything short of the Apocalypse. It might even make it through the End Days.

The door of the room eased opened, and someone slipped in.

Arse first.

As soon as his whole body was in, he eased the door shut, never turning around. He crept backward, each foot seeking a secure stance before the stranger shifted his weight and moved again. He had something in front of him. John couldn’t see what.

He looked frantically toward the chair, but Sherlock couldn’t be seen—and wouldn’t move, because moving would alert the stranger to his presence.

John scowled. What the hell was a naked stranger doing creeping around Holmescroft?

In the hall beyond there was the sound of feet moving along the corridor. John frowned, trying to recall the circuits Sherlock had predicted Mycroft’s security staff would move along as they walked their beats. He knew one went from the kitchens up to the ground storey and along the central axis of the main wing, but he couldn’t decide where this room fell. Or was this even in the main wing? Had Sherlock led them out into the second wing, or the little h-bar that connected them?

He didn’t know.

Meanwhile the stranger was no happier than John. He gave a frustrated grunt, and spun, scarpering for the heavy draped velvet curtains. He ducked behind…and John clearly saw, for just a glimpse, what he held. The metal shone cold and sleek, the barrel tooled and faintly rectangular, like John’s own Sig Sauer, back home with Mary….

This was like a bloody French farce, John thought, frowning. He drew out his weapon, such as it was. Why did he let Mary and Sherlock talk him into things? Why? What the hell was he doing breaking into the private estate of the Spymaster Supreme of England, if not of all the Western Powers? And with nothing to defend himself but his fists and a fucking water pistol?

And who the hell was the stranger?

John frowned, going through his memory of “known enemies of the state,” a short list, and one Mycroft had shown no interest in making longer. Fit, average height, fair hair cropped short. Nice arse, insofar as John felt fit to judge such things. Firm, athletic legs, the thighs and calves full and toned. Hard to guess the age. John had seen little beyond the bum and back and a flash of shadowed, light-edged profile as the man popped behind the curtain—and even then he’d been more fixated on that gleaming, sleek automatic.

This was not a game any more.

Out in the hall someone was talking, softly—a firm, businesslike murmur. Not enough to recognize voices. Not enough to have a clue what had been said.

The footsteps moved on.

Inside the room three men each held to the security of cover, unmoving.

John could hear his breath, too loud, in spite of using old ambush tricks: breathing through his mouth in slow, softened breaths, carefully unvoiced, not letting any slip through the narrower, noisier passages of his nose. He muffled his face in the turn of his own shoulder, to further silence his breath. He clutched the damned fake Sig Sauer, wondering if it would buy him or Sherlock time if things got any worse.

He couldn’t hear either man, even though he listened so hard he started imagining arrhythmias in his own heartbeat.

The door of the billiard room made a sound—a sound so soft and slight John could think of no name for it. It didn’t sigh, or creak, or squeak. It just…was. The bottom edge tickled over wool carpet so perfectly calculated that there wasn’t even a sound of brushing fiber. The air itself seemed to think too loudly.

A white face peeked in and then turned before John could focus. A slim form crept in backward, much as the previous stranger had. This time he wasn’t naked, but dressed in a long silk dressing robe, very Victorian in cut and style. The man had one hand in a pocket. The other gripped a slim, tight-furled umbrella topped with a gleaming silver crescent handle.

It was then that everything went to hell. John decided that later, as he puked off adrenaline nerves in the aftermath, wiping away blood-red drops from his hands and trying not to cry, or laugh hysterically, or otherwise prove he’d finally come undone.

“Mike!”

Two voices, from two separate parts of the room. The man in the robe swung around. From his pocket came, yes, another gleam of polished, tooled metal. He focused on Sherlock, who rose like the Spectral Vision of Marley. His body was hidden in all his layered blackness, and he was all haunt-eyed, skeletal face and gleaming weapon, swiveling toward the window, the black makeup under his eyes making him look like a death’s-head with gaping, empty eye sockets. Mycroft—for so the man was, squealed a very undignified squeal, and brought up his own weapon, training it on the apparent haunt. But as he did so, the naked stranger stepped out from behind the curtain. His own automatic came up, wavered for a moment, then locked onto Sherlock.

“Mike, run,” two voices commanded.

John boiled out from under the billiards table, determined to at least buy the brothers time. He braced himself, let the idiotic water gun rise, and said, “Here, you bastard!” Look here!”

The man turned toward him, shocked and frightened by the sudden arrival of yet another combatant, his gun rising to target John, now.

“Fuck,” he growled, eyes panicked. Then his hand steadied, and with a look of despair he prepared to shoot, even as John realized for the first time that it was Lestrade, face a mask of anguish, ready to go down holding off an enemy.

“No!” Sherlock’s voice, and then his face, that white skull mask rocketing across the room toward John, his own arm steady as he targeted an enemy he’d not yet recognized.

“No!” Mycroft, in frantic dismay, his own gun coming up to protect—yes, to protect the policeman from the crazed ninja-spectre-enemy about to gun him down.

In that brief fraction of a second four guns fired. Two, of course, were water pistols, and John’s heart sank.

The sounds were wrong, but Sherlock’s face exploded in an ocean of blackish red.

There was screaming.

At least all of it wasn’t John’s. He lunged forward, already sure it was too late—but Sherlock was still standing.

“Fuck,” the tall man said, explosively. “Mike….”

There was more swearing going on, as Mycroft and Lestrade finally managed to sort out the identities of all their attackers. John was impressed. He’d heard soldiers swear. He’d heard Master Sergeants swear! Hell, he’d heard med students swear. Apparently the only thing that rivaled those was a blue-collar career MET copper—and the only thing that rivaled _that_ was the Spymaster Supreme, who was pulling in words that sizzled and hissed and spat in a range of languages, not one of which was apparently good for use in diplomatic circles. Even the punctuation sounded aggressive.

John, though, was scrambling for Sherlock’s face, covered with deep, dripping red.

“Here, shut up, let me…” He reached up and touched—only to jump back, squalling and swearing himself.

Slimy-cold-slithery-sticky oh-fuck-ick. He’d felt eels that were warmer and drier and less shuddery.

“What the fuck?” He leaned forward, scowling fiercely. He reached out and touched gingerly. “ _What is that?”_

Sherlock’s tongue slipped out and tested the ooze delicately. He frowned, and said, a bit stunned, “Strawberry. Well…synthetic.” Then he shuddered, and made a sound as though he was about to be ill. “Delete! Delete! Oh, God, Mike…”

Mycroft, now past outright terror, was talking into his mobile, voice quiet and rapid, apparently assuring his security staff that the screaming in the billiards room was no problem. At least, not until the morning review came around… He glanced at his younger brother, and snarled, “Well if you will go and break into my private home without warning, you can hardly complain what you come across.”

“Lube. Your stupid guns shoot lube,” Sherlock snapped. “Which is bad enough. But strawberry?”

For a moment there was stunned silence between all four men.

Then Mycroft and Lestrade’s eyes caught, and lit—and they smiled.

John shivered ever after, recalling that smile. Sharks were safer, he thought. And Mary in one of her more exciting moods was less sexually charged…and lacked their malice.

“Better than the guava,” Lestrade drawled. “And we’re saving the lime for later.”

“You were running around Homlescroft shooting each other with lube,” John said, and almost added, “For the love of God, why?”

His brain strangled his powers of speech in a desperate play for survival.

Sherlock growled…a bitter, sullen sound like a junkyard dog. “I didn’t need to know this,” he said.

Mycroft’s eyebrows flirted high, and he cocked his head, eyes laughing. “No—and I didn’t tell you,” he pointed out. “You only know because you broke in, brother-mine. Act in haste, repent at leisure.” He considered. “What did you actually come for?”

Sherlock just scowled…but his eyes flicked guiltily toward John. Mycroft nodded.

“Ah. Mrs. Watson’s records?”

“Mmmm.”

“There are easier ways, Sherlock. Did you think to ask?”

Sherlock grimaced and rolled his eyes. “Where’s the fun in that?”

Lestrade muttered something cheerfully derogatory about people whose definition of fun was breaking into houses armed with nothing but water guns. Sherlock huffed, and attempted a pointed glower at the fake lube-shooting automatic in Lestrade’s hand. The attempt failed: Lestrade’s eyes were eloquent, and they pointed out silently that he and Mycroft had at least been playing a game where the rules were known and the weapons understood…understood only too well. A game in which getting shot repeatedly only increased the odds of both men merrily playing doctor later….

Not an observation Sherlock appeared willing to challenge.

Mycroft sighed. He looked at John. “If you’ll wait a moment,” he said, then slipped his automatic into his pocket, hooked his umbrella over his elbow, and stalked from the room.

“It’s not even a particularly good flavor of strawberry,” Sherlock said.

“They say those things change taste on each person,” Lestrade said, all innocence. “Every time I’ve tasted it, it’s tasted pretty goo—“

“Yes, all right, I’m sure that’s enough,” Sherlock snapped. He shot an evil look at the other man. “And to think you dare call me immature.”

“Oh, I promise, we got the stuff in the mature aisle.”

That was when John’s nerves began to unwind, and the hysteria and post-adrenaline nausea cut in. He fought back a frantic snigger, then had to fight harder when Lestrade glanced at him—and winked. Sherlock’s imitation of a slowly heating pressure cooker, all hisses and pent up steam, only made it worse.

Mycroft sauntered back in, a manila folder in one hand. “Dr. Watson? I believe these are your wife’s?” He held out the folder.

John, giggling, looked at it. “Yeah, but I can’t say she likes it above half,” he said. “You know how women are about bad photos…”

Mycroft gave a prim smirk. “Yes. Quite a lot of us feel the same way in my profession.”

“Burn ‘em,” John said.

“Oh, don’t be stupid,” Sherlock said, weary and resigned. “If he’s this willing to give that up, he’s got copies.”

Mycroft raised a brow, and said, tartly, “That would have been true even if I’d made the good doctor fight tooth and nail. As it is—Sherlock, you do know she’s safer if I have the material and know what it is?”

Sherlock blinked.

“What do you mean?” John asked, wary.

“I mean—“

Sherlock swore, then, softly, and met John’s eye. “She didn’t want us to get that,” he said.

“What?”

“She didn’t want us to get it—she was willing to take on…you know. But she didn’t care that Mike had it.”

John glared at Mycroft Holmes. “They’re allies?” he snapped.

“Oh, hardly,” Mycroft said. “But for goodness sake, I do know who I allow near my brother and his associates.”

“She deduced it,” Sherlock said. “She trusts him.”

“So why did she let us come?” John snarled. “Idiot trip with idiot water guns to fetch idiot files we don’t need….”

Sherlock shrugged, and sighed—then smiled, ruefully. “Because we wanted to,” he said, then grinned, all mischief. “And it was fun, wasn’t it?”

John remembered the prep. The trip out. The dark shadows. The carefully planned route to the house. The entrance. The priest’s hole. The hidden corridors. The dive for the billiards room.

He began to laugh, remembering Lestrade sneaking in arse first, naked as a jay bird.

Still naked…

That was when he had to retreat to the loo. But it was all right. It was all perfectly all right.

And later that night, as he told Mary the whole thing, and they giggled together in their warm, familiar bed, Mary said, “Damn. I wish you’d brought home one of those lube guns. That sounds like fun….”

And John, with a smile that was all water soluble gel and lime scent, said, gleefully, “Oh, but I did. Mycroft decided you deserved something out of the deal…”

And the rest of the night was a different adventure story.


End file.
